Tuesday, 14 July 2009

I keep thinking that I will just stop this useless blathering ... it is clear that the country I grew up in exists no more ... or exists only as a parody, a daemonic parody I guess it would be ...

three of them this time ... Jonathan Edwards, Greg McCormick, & Ben Mitchell, no pictures of the last two yet ... later

who are these thugs and goons and bullies and liars in our police forces? where were they brought up? who are their parents? who were their teachers? who are their masters?

when they get around to posting the video of the proceedings for Tuesday (when the events in the story below took place) it will likely be at Session 25.

"free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise ..."

there he sits in his black thug shirt, as handsome as Paul Newman, looking like the star quarterback on some home-town football team, with his expressionless face and his careful, "I don't recall ... I'm not sure ... I don't remember ..." and beside him the righteous little pea-hen Judge, all of them being so courteous and well-mannered and thankful to each other for small bureaucratic performances, and polite to a fault

Halifax Regional Police constable acknowledges that what he mentioned in his statement was not reflected in surveillance video from the scene

OLIVER MOORE

Halifax — Last updated on Tuesday, Jul. 14, 2009 11:40AM EDT

The police officer who arrested Howard Hyde testified Tuesday at a fatality inquiry that he had been mistaken when he said the mentally ill man was warned before being tasered.

Halifax Regional Police Constable Jonathan Edwards gave a statement to the RCMP on 25-November, 2007, three days after Mr. Hyde died in custody in a Dartmouth jail.

Inquiry into the death of Howard Hyde

In that statement, he described the booking room fracas that involved Mr. Hyde being tasered repeatedly by another officer and ended with the 45-year-old stopping breathing and having to be revived in a hallway.

Prompted by Kevin MacDonald, the lawyer for Mr. Hyde's sister and her husband, Constable Edwards acknowledged the warning mentioned in his statement was not reflected in surveillance video from the scene.

“I watched the video just before giving the statement. I don't know why I would have said that,” the officer said.

Mr. MacDonald suggested that Constable Edwards had been trying to establish a justification for the tasering, prompting an objection from a lawyer for the local police.

“The proposition is scandalous,” said Sandra MacPherson-Duncan. “There's no suggestion that this interview [with the RCMP] was probing justification for use of force.”

Provincial Court Judge Anne Derrick, who is presiding over the inquiry, allowed the line of questions to continue.

Asked again, Constable Edwards noted that the officers didn't have to give a warning and that he didn't have to justify his actions to the RCMP.